Jendaya

The best we ever did was down to 65 from 82 I believe. But it took like 6 hours for our large living area (living room/dining/kitchen/hallway). In a bedroom, it could probably get much colder in a shorter amount of time. I didn't have my temp gauge in the bedroom when I used it there, but I had to turn the unit off sometime during the night because it actually got too cold in my room.

showcaller

I find this very tempting. We have an older wall unit air conditioner in our bedroom which is just adequate if we start it before it gets to warm out. This unit very well might be perfect. Anyone know what the largest room it will effectively cool?

Lukeonia1

With a dual-hose air conditioner, it draws outside air in (through a hose) to transfer the heat to and blow back outside (through another hose). This way, it works much like a conventional air conditioner, keeping the hot and cold parts totally separate.

But with a single-hose unit like this, the a/c draws in cool room air to transfer the exhaust heat to, which then gets blown outside (through the hose). The same air the unit just spent a bunch of energy cooling gets heated and blown back outside. This means warm outside air has to work its way in someplace else to replace it, making the whole endeavor terribly inefficient.

But, dual-hose air conditioners cost twice as much as single-hose units. Can they really be that much more expensive to design and build? Or is it all a big con to sell tons of cheap inefficient air conditioners, and drive up the price of the ones that actually work well?

sucker4crap

foodizmurder

Don't buy these. They generate so much heat, and the exhaust hose ends up being a giant radiator. Sure, you exhaust out the window, but so much heat escapes into your house before it gets there. I had one as close to the window as humanly possible to minimize the amount of heat these generate, and it STILL didn't cool our small living room. It still uses a window, but is worse and more expensive than a window unit. Don't waste your money.

stepharlo

I'm considering this for my basement, which doesn't get crazy hot given its mostly underground location. But I am in Tennessee, and a/c is still occasionally needed to keep it comfortable down there. As it is a basement, a dehumidifier is a must. I love the idea of combining the two units into one. What I'm wondering is, can it do both functions at once? Or does it either cool or dehumidify? And since there is no holding tank, does the moisture removed just drip out the window and down the side of my house?

shoulda2

On one hand they are better than nothing and I have used them to cool an office in a machine shop down and it worked better than fans by far... The room (10x10) would cool down in about 30 minutes and be tolerable on hot days when it was 85+ in the shop.

The office also had a window and when the portable unit died out we switch to a window unit and it was much quicker to cool and was much more power efficient than the larger portable unit.

The long story short is that it's good when you need occasional air conditioning if you live in an area with a handful of really hot days and want to wheel it out to cool down. Otherwise you probably want to invest in a window unit for better efficiency which means more cooling per watt.

videowallart

We have 2 of these at our weekend place in the desert, One bedroom doesn't get cool with the house a/c.
Love, love, love, these units. They work great. One downside though, The vents are suicidal, Try very hard to adjust them once and remember to never touch them again. You have been warned, You don't want their death on your hands-Do you?

khammo01

Lukeonia1 wrote:To this day, I still don't understand single-hose air conditioners.

With a dual-hose air conditioner, it draws outside air in (through a hose) to transfer the heat to and blow back outside (through another hose). This way, it works much like a conventional air conditioner, keeping the hot and cold parts totally separate.

But with a single-hose unit like this, the a/c draws in cool room air to transfer the exhaust heat to, which then gets blown outside (through the hose). The same air the unit just spent a bunch of energy cooling gets heated and blown back outside. This means warm outside air has to work its way in someplace else to replace it, making the whole endeavor terribly inefficient.

But, dual-hose air conditioners cost twice as much as single-hose units. Can they really be that much more expensive to design and build? Or is it all a big con to sell tons of cheap inefficient air conditioners, and drive up the price of the ones that actually work well?

I don't get it.

That's not quite how it works. The unit has two fans and two air circulation zones.
Fan 1: The first fan takes room air, passes over the evaporator and then recirculates it back into the room.
Fan 2: The exhaust hose takes air from the room, blows it over the compressor and condenser, and exhausts that hot air. As air is exhausted from your house, it creates negative pressure, so it is drawing in more warm air from the outside through the various cracks in your house.

This is not as efficient as a window unit, which uses outside air to cool the compressor and condenser, which means air is not getting sucked in to your house.

PKRWUD

If you are able to use a window unit instead, do so. These portable units should be your absolute last resort. I also highly recommend going to your local Home Depot and buying a box of insulated tubing that matches the diameter of the hose included with the a/c and using it instead. Otherwise that hose becomes a heater, and really slows down the process.

disraeli

stepharlo wrote:I'm considering this for my basement, which doesn't get crazy hot given its mostly underground location. But I am in Tennessee, and a/c is still occasionally needed to keep it comfortable down there. As it is a basement, a dehumidifier is a must. I love the idea of combining the two units into one. What I'm wondering is, can it do both functions at once? Or does it either cool or dehumidify? And since there is no holding tank, does the moisture removed just drip out the window and down the side of my house?

The manual says that dehumidifier mode increases room temp., so it's one or the other.

Lukeonia1

khammo01 wrote:That's not quite how it works. The unit has two fans and two air circulation zones.
Fan 1: The first fan takes room air, passes over the evaporator and then recirculates it back into the room.
Fan 2: The exhaust hose takes air from the room, blows it over the compressor and condenser, and exhausts that hot air. As air is exhausted from your house, it creates negative pressure, so it is drawing in more warm air from the outside through the various cracks in your house.

This is not as efficient as a window unit, which uses outside air to cool the compressor and condenser, which means air is not getting sucked in to your house.

Yeah, that's exactly what I said. This air conditioner literally blows nice cool room air out the window (after transferring the waste heat to it), causing hot outside air to work its way in through whatever openings it can find. I find it entirely unsurprising that folks complain about these things not working well.

I wonder, if I bought one, could I dismantle it and convert it to a two-hose design? I'm sure it wouldn't be pretty (to say nothing of the warranty), but I can do a lot of interesting things with two-by-fours, styrofoam sheeting and foil tape.

jgroves55

I purchased one of these last year for a room that i run 2 computers in during the day, the reason I purchased it was to replace a small window unit that was noisy. Yes this unit is large, weighs a ton, but its about as quiet of a ac your going to get, does a good job cooling, but most of all half the noise of a window unit, heat exhaust outside. Set up was easy, remote is user friendly, and you can use it as an air cleaner when ac season is over. Not a perfect solution, but for what your paying for this a good one.

jeffiekins

stepharlo wrote:...can it do both functions at once? Or does it either cool or dehumidify?

An air conditioner alwaysboth cools and dehumidifies.

That's why window units drip water outside: the water is extracted (dehumidified) from the inside air. This one uses the hot air being exhausted to evaporate the water and carry it out as vapor.

Mechanically, a dehumidifier is exactly the same as an air conditioner. The only difference: after the room air is cooled and dehumidified by passing through the evaporator (cold) coil, it then goes through the condenser (hot) coil (that's outside in a window A/C unit). The resulting air is slightly warmer, and dehumidified.

Why is it warmer? The thing is not 100% efficient. Whatever power it uses to run the compressor and fan is converted to heat, just like every other appliance in your house (whose rear end isn't sticking out a window): if your TV uses 150 watts, that's 1/10th of a space heater's worth of heat that it produces constantly.

I'm supposed to buy something? But we're having so much fun with things as they are, I don't want to ruin it!
Purchases: 18 / 11 (nobody cares what, so I won't tell you);
Brownies of Cannabis: 1 / 12 (Thanks, Wootalyzer! -- would it help if I called them something else?).

sflow15

Had this A/C for over a year now. Lots of pros and cons I can tell! We replaced a large window A/C because it was right above our downstairs neighbors and it dripped water on their front steps (aren't we considerate neighbors!!). We replaced a 12.5k BTU (or 13? Can't quite remember) with this one, and the difference in ability to cool off about a 550sqft. space cannot be ignored! This one just CANNOT keep up when we have major heat spells of about 85f+, which in New England can be quite a few days in the summer. However, it does have some great features:

Pros:
-Ionic air filtration (EXCELLENT to have in winters when you cannot open windows and air become hella stale!) Winter air is NO LONGER stuffy and gross!! Yay!
-I've ID'ed 3 places where gross gunky stuff is filtered and can be wiped or washed off making the unit's filtration (though nothing near HEPA) quite good for a portable or window A/C.
-Drastically reduced window space taken up and allows me to have much more needed sunlight and space to grow windowsill plants (I grow tons of orchids indoors!!).
-Does OKAY with cooling, but buyer beware if you have heat spells or don't live in temperate climates. I am cooling a large space, but MY FLORIDA FRIENDS, PLEASE DON'T EVEN CONSIDER BUYING IF YOU HAVE 500+sqft. TO COOL!!
-You've got to love the louvers! It's really nice, especially for drying stuff off with the ion-charged air. It really does make stuff smell better if you put in front of the ionic air for a couple of hours!!

Cons:
-Well, of course, it's limits are that it doesn't seem to compare well to the same BTU of a window A/C.
-The hose gets REALLY HOT! Especially when you have multiple 80+ degree days! This KILLS any of my windowsill plants near the hose, so I'm guessing it's well above 115 degrees. Could be a bit of a problem if your actually trying to cool off the area around the A/C. Found that if you shorten the hose, you shorten the radiant heat area of the tube (otherwise, you've got yourself a radiator heating your house in the summer)!. However, catch-22 is if you shorten the hose, you also have the A/C pulling in the hotter air nearest the tube... Single-tube A/C's all have this similar problem.
-Takes up quite a bit more realty in your space. Plan to put it in a big enough space. We have ours in the dining room simply because we use the space the least and it is quite the behemoth! Sadly, we do not use the dining room table much because we simply can't get around the A/C!

It's obviously got its drawbacks, but it works for us (until something better comes along)! Be smart about this A/C, plan for a big space inside, if you want your windows to be free of an unsightly A/C. It's much more than a window A/C in terms of it's features, and we use the other features a lot, so it's used quite a bit during the year.

dmfrance

Never purchase a single hose a/c like this one; only buy two hose units. With one hose, the a/c takes cool room air, cools the unit, and exhausts it outside. Hot ourside air comes into the home to replace the exhaust, so that the process is very inefficient and costly to run. A two hose unit takes in outside air, cools the unit and expells the air back outside through the second hose. Unforturately, most portable a/c's made are one hose unit; a near scam IMO.

ghost1355

stepharlo wrote:I'm considering this for my basement, which doesn't get crazy hot given its mostly underground location. But I am in Tennessee, and a/c is still occasionally needed to keep it comfortable down there. As it is a basement, a dehumidifier is a must. I love the idea of combining the two units into one. What I'm wondering is, can it do both functions at once? Or does it either cool or dehumidify? And since there is no holding tank, does the moisture removed just drip out the window and down the side of my house?

I have one of these from the Woot 9 months ago and it works well for air conditioning/dehumidifying a basement. The system does have an internal tank for moisture collection, which has a plug on the bottom you can put a hose on to drain into something (bucket, drain, empty monkey skulls, etc.) It does a very good job cooling and dehumidifying our 1500 sq ft basement. Also, you should definitely insulate the exhaust tube. I live in Central Illinois, so it is humid most of the summer. Hope that helps stepharlo.

tradiuz

Expect it to get loud over time. After owning it for a few months, it got extremely loud (compressor related, no way to quiet it). When I brought the problem up, they only way to get my problem remediated was to pay to ship it back, which would cost close to half what I paid for mine.

bluemaple

Lukeonia1 wrote:To this day, I still don't understand single-hose air conditioners.

With a dual-hose air conditioner, it draws outside air in (through a hose) to transfer the heat to and blow back outside (through another hose). This way, it works much like a conventional air conditioner, keeping the hot and cold parts totally separate.

But with a single-hose unit like this, the a/c draws in cool room air to transfer the exhaust heat to, which then gets blown outside (through the hose). The same air the unit just spent a bunch of energy cooling gets heated and blown back outside. This means warm outside air has to work its way in someplace else to replace it, making the whole endeavor terribly inefficient.

But, dual-hose air conditioners cost twice as much as single-hose units. Can they really be that much more expensive to design and build? Or is it all a big con to sell tons of cheap inefficient air conditioners, and drive up the price of the ones that actually work well?

I don't get it.

@Lukeonia1, I wonder the same thing. Seems like the more efficient dual path design shouldn't cost much, if any more.

bluemaple

khammo01 wrote:That's not quite how it works. The unit has two fans and two air circulation zones.
Fan 1: The first fan takes room air, passes over the evaporator and then recirculates it back into the room.
Fan 2: The exhaust hose takes air from the room, blows it over the compressor and condenser, and exhausts that hot air. As air is exhausted from your house, it creates negative pressure, so it is drawing in more warm air from the outside through the various cracks in your house.

This is not as efficient as a window unit, which uses outside air to cool the compressor and condenser, which means air is not getting sucked in to your house.

@khammo01, so what you're saying in almost as many words is, @Lukeonia1 was right.

zwayne

Bought one last year on Woot. Using it for a large bedroom with slider windows (if we had double hungs I would have just bought a regular window a/c). We are VERY pleased with its performance. Yes, it's very heavy, but who cares unless you are moving it between floors since it's on wheels and is easy to roll.

Certainly NOT too early to think about a/c. This ain't gonna necessarily be available when you're desperate from shvitzing and will take whatever is available at Home Depot.

ronin1979

We bought ours at Costco, works great! Using it in the bedroom only, don't have to move it at all. Been running it for two years now, no problems at all. Make sure that you clean the filter often and if it stops working and lights are blinking it is time to empty the reservoir in the back. (orange fluid comes out).

Strick28

khammo01 wrote:That's not quite how it works. The unit has two fans and two air circulation zones.
Fan 1: The first fan takes room air, passes over the evaporator and then recirculates it back into the room.
Fan 2: The exhaust hose takes air from the room, blows it over the compressor and condenser, and exhausts that hot air. As air is exhausted from your house, it creates negative pressure, so it is drawing in more warm air from the outside through the various cracks in your house.

This is not as efficient as a window unit, which uses outside air to cool the compressor and condenser, which means air is not getting sucked in to your house.

vagel

behappi

I do not have one of these, but my son does. When I visited him last summer the one thing I might mention is that you have to empty a water reservoir fairly frequent. If you go out for a bit, when you return home you can find it shut off because the water level in the holding tank is too high. So you come home to a hot house. And it's no fun carrying a heavy water filled open container rooms away to dump it. Just saying.

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